May Round Up

Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that May only featured two challenges being undertaken. There has been a gradual decline of diligence in blog updates, at least here. Odd, since when I was working practically every day, it seemed I did nothing with my spare time but write these things. Basically, now that I’m free to only do things I care about I pretty much just … keep doing things …

With no central structural focal point for my life to revolve around I am constantly unsure of what tomorrow will bring and/or what I’d actually promised to bring to tomorrow.

And then stuff happens. Stuff is pretty awesome that way. Sometimes I burn a little bit of energy feeling nervous about the chance that I’ll wake up one morning and realise that I somehow screwed my entire life up … but then I kind of shrug it off. I almost look forward to it, because the day I think I have nothing is the day that I hop on my bike and literally bugger off into the sunset. I mean, that day doesn’t have to be tomorrow, and I intend to do that at the end of this year even if I have some really big success at something, but still … I’ve basically decided that there is no such thing as rock bottom for me, and that’s kinda cool. As long as I have food, water, air and my brain, I’ll be able to entertain myself and do some amount of good. And if I lose any of the above … well, I can’t exactly worry if I’m dead or without a brain, can I?

The problem is basically my capacity to focus on all of these things at once. And now that many of the balls I’ve been juggling (more personal things, less relevant to the content of this blog) have decided to take a short break, I am finally in a position to improve that capacity.

I have mentioned that I’m a hoarder by nature. I collect objects, information, ideas, sentiments, plans, and they all just pile up on each other. After all, these things might come in handy one day! (And often they do, at which point I am rewarded for my efforts by this excessive sense of not-quite-smug satisfaction at how crazy-prepared I like to pretend I am.) Generally they just spill out of my cupboard and/or mouth at random intervals as I overload myself with everything.

I cannot handle buffets or gelati stands because the sheer range of choices means that no matter what I eat, I will be missing out on about 20 other things I wouldn’t mind trying. The best part about being vegetarian, as far as I’m concerned, is that it limits my options at restaurants – even then I find myself paralysed if there are just two interesting-looking dishes. The best solution I can usually come up with is to order one dish I know I love and one that I’d like to try. Then when the meal is over I am full not only of curry or whatever but also full of shame because I definitely ate and spent too much. At least there’s a doggie bag and one less meal I have to worry about in the future?

It is the ultimate in First World Problems.

Dude seriously it’s amazing how meta you get sometimes. Are you actually attempting to make your explanation of the problem a demonstration of the problem too? So there’s so much to write about that you’re going to basically ramble about nothing instead?

Hang on I’m going somewhere with this.

How exciting! Look why don’t you stop and ask for directions then we can get to this “somewhere” of yours and then we can all stop being polite and with any luck get back to our lives?

Okay! So, I figured I could solve all this!

I will do this with TIME MANAGEMENT.

You will do this with a freaking obvious concept so simple it barely deserves to have its own word.

Correct! It is my opinion that most recipes for success feature at least one of these!

I’ve got a lot to do. I’ve been doing a lot, too. But it’s been too ad hoc, and it’s becoming difficult to keep track of it all.

So being you, you decided to organise everything into some sort of elaborate system that requires strict adherence to an assortment of arbitrary rules?

I tried it the other way! These last couple months have been relaxing, sure! And I have made loads of progress, but it is difficult for me to see where I’m going with it all! I have been “going with the flow” so much that I have been nothing but flow!

Rather than just having a list of goals/objectives and being flexible about everything, it’s time for a bit more discipline and structure in my life. It is time for … efficiency.

I’ve spent most of the morning playing around with Excel. First step was to list all the things I wanted to get done in any given week. They ended up naturally clumping together under different categories like “Growth”, “Social”, “Learning”, “Organisation” and “Chilling”. “Sleep” and “Indulgence” (code for “frigging around”) received their own separate categories.

On a separate spreadsheet, I made a timetable like I had when I was back in university (and worked 3 jobs + a volunteer role at that temple). The beauty of Excel is the way you can program calculations in so that figures change based on others. For example, the following pie chart sits on my desktop now. It automatically updates as I change my timetable, and allows me to instantly see how much of my time is going where in the week to come.

“Winning” obviously covers things like “Planning”, “Organisation” and … earning money*

 

Awfully huge chunks of dark red and black you have there.

Clearly I am not finished deciding what to do with my time next week. Also, “sleep” is set to assume I get 8 hours a day unless I tell it otherwise, and “Indulgence” automatically assumes that any of the 168 hours in the week not spent in the other categories will be spent mucking around. So this is what my week looks like before I make any solid plans. Looking at that huge chunk of predicted wasted time is a really good motivator to make sure I don’t actually see those hours go down the drain. I mean, who wants to spend more time awake and stuffing around than they even spend asleep? Clearly I am not finished deciding what to do with my time next week.

Also, a glance reminds me that I haven’t been prioritising “Growing” (reading, writing, exercise, music, etc) very much lately, so I can adjust my plans accordingly. This is a bit more flexible than confining myself to quotas for each category or something equally stifling, which I may have been inclined to do 6 months ago.

The aforementioned timetable is similarly colour-coded in such a fashion that it looks horribly dark and depressing if I’m not furthering my goals.

It will be interesting to see how long I can keep this up.

Hopefully more interesting than this post was dude nobody got naked in this post or anything hell the only picture was a pie chart for flub’s sake!